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empty of gardens or trees. Their cottages, constructed of unwhitewashed and unpainted wood, have a sombre appearance. Their roofs, often of laths, are made in the shelving ridge style. The yards, sheds and interiors of the Great Russian abodes completely differ from the Ukrainian habitations. On the frontier, the Ukrainian villages, and those of the Great Russians, are frequently neighbouring. It even happens that a Ukrainian village, or Great Russian village, over-reaches the frontier by some scores of miles. But one never sees the houses constructed partly in the Ukrainian type or partly according to the Russian style. The two styles are never confused with each other.
The same difference is met with in the costumes, manners and morals. The Ukrainian peasants and those of Great Russia rarely inter-marry. The character of the two types is so accentuated that the Russian villages, constructed by emigrants in the depth of the Ukraine (Kherson Government) and those of the Ukrainians, built also by emigrants in the heart of Russia (Saratov Government) preserve their ethnic individuality.
These differences are accounted for by anthropology and history. The Great Russians were constituted in the North by a mixture of a minority of Slav emigrants, and a majority of Finnish tribes. The Slavs gave their language; but from the anthropological point of view it was the Finns who prevailed, and they also had a great preponderance in all that concerns the customs, and even the mythology.
Although they have undergone in the past certain oriental influences, the Ukrainian people have preserved a much more purely Slavonic character. Ethnographically, it has more resemblance with the Slavs of South than with the Great Russians, although the languages of the Great Russians and the Ukrainians, distinct as they both are, both belong to the same group of Slavonic languages of the East.
Historically, the explanation of the characters and the differences between these two races is also easy.
